Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is a doozy. Whole lotta stumpin’ goin’ on. I began with two giveaways, 1-D, four letters, “Rock band with a lightning bolt in the middle of its logo” and 36-D, eight letters, “Subject of the book subtitled Magic, Kareem, Riley….” And then I scratched and clawed my way to the finish line.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

3-A, ten letters, “Beneficiary of ‘special provisions’ in the Indian Constitution.” I think this answer could have been better clued.

6-D, five letters, “Old school fuddy-duddies.” Carefully clued.

13-A, four letters, “Appropriate.” A shining example of the unhelpful clue. FINE? TAKE?

14-A, seven letters, “Corona concoction.” Never heard of it. I guess I’m not much for concoctions.

18-A, ten letters, “Nostalgic evocations.” I will always associate this word with my daughter, who once observed that a stranger on the street was one.

26-A, seven letters, “Flooring.” Uh, SHAGRUG?

27-D, ten letters, “No longer an option.” Fun, because there’s a much more common idiom here. The Google Ngram Viewer shows it as eighteen times more common.

28-D, four letters, “Brit’s ‘your honor.’” Yow.

34-A, three letters, “Lady in the House of Lords.” And for a moment, I was right on this puzzle’s wavelength.

35-A, fifteen letters, “Just kidding!” Yeah, sure.

37-D, six letters, “Schumann’s Dichterliebe.” I asked Elaine not to tell me if my answer was wrong. She didn’t, and it wasn’t.

39-A, three letters, “Cross hairs.” That’s a lot for a simple answer.

42-A, seven letters, “Parker’s charge.” I tried to figure out how to fit an hourly or daily rate into this seven-letter space.

48-A, five letters, “Asian cooling condiment.” I like things hot. I thought that this condiment was just for flavor.

52-A, eight letters, “Held in low regard?” Pretty Stumper-y.

54-A, ten letters, “ Zeppole’s Canadian kin.” You don’t need to understand the answer to get credit for it, right? (I looked up the kinfolks when the puzzle was done.)

My favorite in this puzzle, because it’s just so weird: 32-A, five letters, “Drawn thermometer raiser.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.